Demon Deacons' dud dilutes postseason hopes

Published: Sunday, November 25, 2012 at 01:15 AM.

“We’re not a competitive team right now,” Grobe said, when asked if Wake Forest deserved a postseason berth.

The scored was tied 7-7 in the second quarter when Vanderbilt (8-4) broke open Saturday’s game with a flurry of three touchdowns in 6½ minutes.

Wesley Tate’s 15-yard scoring run was followed by Jordan Rodgers’ 64-yard touchdown bomb to Jordan Matthews, who darted diagonally across a crowd running vertically down the seam of the field to grab a pass that initially seemed intended for tight end Kris Kentera.

“The long pass was a little bit ridiculous,” Grobe said. “We looked like Keystone Cops back there, stumbling all around, acting like we’ve never been back there before. It was really a ball that I thought we should have made a play on.”

Next, the Commodores capitalized on Sherman Ragland’s fumble to move ahead 28-7 on Zac Stacy’s 4-yard run via a direct snap with 63 seconds remaining in the first half.

Trailing by three touchdowns, Wake Forest’s response to start the second half quickly became far from inspiring.

Deandre Martin was stuffed for a 1-yard loss and Tanner Price threw back-to-back incompletions. Then Vanderbilt blocked Alexander Kinal’s punt and scored, increasing its lead to 35-7.

WINSTON-SALEM — Needing a victory to become bowl qualified, Wake Forest instead got blasted by a more powerful Vanderbilt team with bigger aims than mere postseason eligibility.

The visiting Commodores’ 55-21 blowout slapped a resounding thud on the finish of Wake Forest’s regular season in football Saturday at BB&T Field.

And as the Demon Deacons emerged from their locker room with their record having dropped to 5-7 — shouldering the weight of three straight losses by a combined margin of 130-27 — the tone of finality and resignation in some voices spoke volumes.

“Being 5-7, I don’t know if we would truly deserve to be in a bowl game,” fullback Tommy Bohanon said. “That’s the goal of every season, to go and get to a bowl game. We would want to go to a bowl game. But being 5-7 is kind of hard to justify going to a bowl game.”

The quirks of the bowl matrix could have worked in Wake Forest’s favor. With 35 bowls, 70 slots need to be filled. Sixty-one teams entered the week eligible and nine more were added to that list the past two days.

The Demon Deacons, despite their losing record, could have assumed the role of replacement solution in the bowl system, especially given their strong Academic Progress Rate.

Some players such as receiver Michael Campanaro and linebacker Riley Haynes said they would embrace a chance to play another game. Bohanon and coach Jim Grobe, though, were blunt in assessing the bowl situation.

“We’re not a competitive team right now,” Grobe said, when asked if Wake Forest deserved a postseason berth.

The scored was tied 7-7 in the second quarter when Vanderbilt (8-4) broke open Saturday’s game with a flurry of three touchdowns in 6½ minutes.

Wesley Tate’s 15-yard scoring run was followed by Jordan Rodgers’ 64-yard touchdown bomb to Jordan Matthews, who darted diagonally across a crowd running vertically down the seam of the field to grab a pass that initially seemed intended for tight end Kris Kentera.

“The long pass was a little bit ridiculous,” Grobe said. “We looked like Keystone Cops back there, stumbling all around, acting like we’ve never been back there before. It was really a ball that I thought we should have made a play on.”

Next, the Commodores capitalized on Sherman Ragland’s fumble to move ahead 28-7 on Zac Stacy’s 4-yard run via a direct snap with 63 seconds remaining in the first half.

Trailing by three touchdowns, Wake Forest’s response to start the second half quickly became far from inspiring.

Deandre Martin was stuffed for a 1-yard loss and Tanner Price threw back-to-back incompletions. Then Vanderbilt blocked Alexander Kinal’s punt and scored, increasing its lead to 35-7.

“A couple things happened and it felt like the wind went out of our sail,” Haynes said. “I definitely wanted to go out on a higher note.”

“I was afraid we were going to have some trouble holding up,” Grobe said. “We’re just held together by duct tape right now up front on the offense line and then we’ve got some of the exact same issues in the secondary.”

Stacy churned out 180 rushing yards for Vanderbilt. Rodgers (17 of 23 for 229 yards and two touchdowns), the younger brother of Green Bay Packers star Aaron Rodgers, attempted only three passes after halftime. Matthews had 10 catches for 144 yards, all in the first half.

Vanderbilt, reaching nearly unprecedented heights under second-year coach James Franklin, has compiled a six-game winning streak for the first time since 1955.

-- EXTRA POINTS …: Wake Forest’s scores came on Bohanon’s 1-yard touchdown plunge on fourth-and-goal in the first quarter, Martin’s 1-yard run in the third quarter and Chibuikem Okoro’s 4-yard touchdown fumble return with 6:28 remaining. … The first touchdown marked the first rushing attempt of the season for Bohanon, a senior. … Campanaro caught a pass in his 21st consecutive game. He finished with eight catches for 98 yards. … Kinal’s five punts gave him 95 for the season, an Atlantic Coast Conference record. … Vanderbilt has won seven of eight games since its Sept. 22 loss at Georgia. … The Commodores’ Carey Spear hit long-distance field goals of 52 and 50 yards.